By Doug Peeples

SGN News Editor

 

Sad to say, India now has the distinction of being the country with the largest power blackout that's ever happened. Roughly 620 million residents (twice the U.S. population) have been affected and the outage has rolled into 22 of the country's 28 states. The blackout has shut down trains (including Delhi's metro system),  stopped water delivery systems, trapped miners underground, shut down air conditioners during intense heat and caused as much inconvenience as you can imagine.

 

While the specific cause has yet to be identified, the failure of three regional grids that cause the blackout has been generally blamed on state electric boards accused of overdrawing power from the grid to meet heavy demand. Frankly, outages in India are so common they generally don't attract attention. The worn out electricity infrastructure fails routinely, particularly when the country tries to meet burgeoning demand with unreliable power transmission and distribution systems.

 

But the last two days of India's blackout news have certainly framed the question those of us involved in the smart grid industry have been asking...

 

Could smart grids help?

Here are some of the answers we've seen among the hundreds of news reports on India's blackout.

·         Eric Niiler, writing in Discovery News, explored the Indian blackout and the storm-related blackouts that affected Maryland, West Virginia and D.C. recently (where many were without power for a week). His article does a good job of portraying what the challenges and payoffs are.

 

·         Adam Lesser, writing for GigaOM, called the blackout a "wake up call" and issued a brief but telling series of arguments for smart grid technologies and initiatives.

 

·         A news story in The Hindu notes that the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (IEEE-SA) said it is time to implement smart grid initiatives.

 

·         Dhamodaran Ramakrishnan, director of Smarter Planet Solutions for IBM India/South Asia, commented in a blog that half of the electricity distributed in India is lost, mostly because of bad infrastructure. In his blog in India Onward, he makes a case for smart grid as the solution for India's power problems and says electric utilities and policy makers have begun taking smart grid technologies seriously. But others have said it will take years for the full impact of smart grids to be felt in the country.

 

·         Katie Fehrenbacher, also writing in GigaOM, said that while the blackout is a major problem it's also a perfect opportunity for next-generation energy technologies and the companies that provide them.

 

India is trying but is a long road away from solving its electricity infrastructure problems. It's an unfortunate coincidence that just last month India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy announced that the country had exceeded its milestone of 1 gigawatt of grid-connected solar power.

 

Please use the Talk Back form below to let us know what you think.

 

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Strong Grid: Smart, Secure, Backed Up

I'd suggest the principal lesson learned is that a massive blackout can happen anywhere human control and complex systems come together. Our systems are inherently vulnerable, and such a catastrophe is likely to happen here again if we remain utterly reliant on a system with multiple points of failure and inadequate back up. The recipe for grid resilience, what I call a Strong Grid, is 1) make it Smart - double down on our efforts to make the grid smart - that is, deploy massive amounts of sensors and controls, embrace data analytics, automate functions, and shift decision making to redundant systems with fail safe mechanisms; 2) make it Secure - insist on addressing the inherent vulnerabilities of centralized grids by fortifying points of physical vulnerability and enforcing cyber security standards, starting with the weakest points and applying consistent measures to identify and remedy points of vulnerability to hacking; and 3) Back it up - foster decentralization at the feeder level so that services can continue in the event of a failure that leads to an extended outage, despite our best efforts at making the grid Smart and Secure. This last step is a great place for utilities to invite homeowners and commercial businesses to collaborate with DER and DR solutions and share both the solution design and the cost. Anything less than providing attention and resources to these three steps invites unnecessary risk and disaster at some point in the future, because these warning signs are clear for all to see. Continuing our current course of blame and repair is a poor strategy alternative to forethought and preparation, when the stakes are so high. We must start by acknowledging the inherent frailty of our centralized grid and take steps to make it stronger. John Cooper, Partner, NextWatt Solutions

John Cooper - 08/01/2012 - 06:36

Where was the SCADA/EMS?

Jesse, these are good points but everyone is missing a very important factor here. The Indian transmission network is controlled by advanced computer systems called SCADA/ EMS (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition/ Energy Management Systems) which are supplied by global suppliers like Alstom Grid (for NRLDC and National Load Dispatch Center, Delhi) and GE's XA/21 at four Regional Load Dispatch Centers-West, East, South and North-East. The SCADA/ EMS is the brain of the transmission network and has advanced software applications to detect overdrawal by states, to conduct system stability analysis, to detect grid under frequency and several other features. The so called investigation report that was promised in 15 days will be written by the same people who were responsible for this power outage - a classic situation of the thief writing a criminal report. The important questions for NRLDC and NLDC dispatchers/ engineers are: - Did the SCADA detect the states overdrawal limit when it hot 90% capacity? I am quite confident that all systems will issue an alarm to dispatchers - The systems are designed to automatically open the breaker feeding the state grid (or) issue warning signals - The SCADA system has Operator Training Simulator (OTS) like Flight Simulators where dispatchers are continously trained to simulate overdrawal and fault conditions. Did NLDC train operators with such condition? - The SCADA system's advanced application can issue alarms and reports when the grid stability is not very good, especially when states are drawing power beyond what has been allotted. Almost all advanced countries use the same SCADA/ EMS technology and are used to prevent such massive outages. The SCADA systems in India are several generations behind current software technology (typical mindset of continuing with status quo) and Power Grid Corp should immediately upgrade these computer systems and put in place better system monitoring conditions. It appears that the Northern power grid was on auto pilot mode with no controls and supervision in place. The bottom line is that the Power system is as good as the tools that monitor the network. Rest are all long term measures to solve the power crisis in India.

Raj - 08/01/2012 - 06:43

Northern India Blackout

You mentioned that India needs 'infrastructure changes.' That means adequate generation, transmission & distribution and maintenace of all of the critical hardware: steam turbines, alternators, pumps, fans, transformers, conductors, contactors and breakers that go into building a reliable 'grid' even before you talk about making it 'smart.'

James B. Norris - 08/01/2012 - 07:03

Operational mishap of infrastructure

Dear Doug, A few things need to be clarified regarding the Indian power infrastructure here. The blackout was caused due to over-draw of power and failiure of 'SMART' SCADA system to detect the projected system operation. The possibility of overdraw could be fault related as well which is being investigated but it can be said with surity that the operation equipment failed. These machines are build by the best compnaies and is in no way primitive as shown in the figure in the article. Further, there was 6GW of idle power plants in the system so the capacity is there to meet the demand as well. Smart grids can surely help in this case by better operation and segregating the grid networks so the cascading effect doesn't come to play. Also, the renewables role in the power system needs to be increased as mentioned by you. There are a lot of short comings on that end which needs to be prioritized.

Brhamesh - 08/01/2012 - 09:06

Use of wireless automated sensing applications

In the wake of India’s crippling power outage, it is becoming increasingly obvious that regional utilities need a stronger infrastructure to support its growing energy usage. Wireless automated sensing applications, especially in a large and somewhat harsh environment like India’s, can provide feedback to utilities in near real-time, allowing them to pinpoint the exact location of the damage and react. This capability could have prevented the second power grid collapse and could have also helped the country’s utilities recover much faster.

Tracy Kristensen - 08/01/2012 - 10:35

Organizational and Work Design Failure

While technical problems might well be the source of this grid failure, I wonder if organizational issues or work design may have something to do with this too?

Mahesh P. Bhave - 08/01/2012 - 17:02

SCADA / EMS coupled with more real time analytics and c

I fully agree with Raj's comments on effectively use SCADA / EMS capabilities and improve the control fuctions progressively both controlling generation and load side..The grid discipine is today is dependent on grid codes issued, commercial mechanisms like ABT. These should be made effective through tchnology usage. While appreciating the fact there are a variety of factors and real life situations contributing to such collapses..this should be treated as an opportunity to learn and initiate activities to create a more intelligent grid..There is a need for real time grid anlaytics considering the number and complexity of transactions in the grid every instance.. While SCADA / EMS systems contribute a pivotal role, other systems such as trading systems/ market exchanges, Metering systems, PMU data analytics(currently these remain only pilots..). Also one has to look at the role of Distributionlevel DMS systems and how their capabiities can be improved to share the burden of EMS which eventually need to become reality with more renewable and distributed generation. Given the supply demand gap and the constraints in generation micro grids / off grid strategy should be actively promoted ..However the real time analytics and controls will still be needed to manage this to cope with such issues in future to avoid failures and at least minimise impacts.. Its time we move forward from pilots to real projects..

Santhosh Nair - 08/01/2012 - 23:25

Stability of Big Systems

It will be intersting to see what actually triggered the collapse incidents. As I understand it, India operates with insufficient Generation Power and therefore you are always reducing demand to keep the system stable. I believe they introduced 'Unscheduled Interchange' penalties on the internal Interconnections with sliding scale pricing. That improved the frequency performance of the overall system although I assume with a a lightly higher level of demand reduction. However, as Raj says there are a number of questions about what the SCADA/EMS was showing as regards the real time conditions, whether the information flow is complete and robust and if the risks associated with each credible fault were correctly analysed. The latter of course applies not just to real time but all critical forward timescales. The accuracy of forward information is of course crucial for matching of Generation to Demand Power (every system is by definition in balance) and security/stability assessment (steady state and fault transient). As regards the 'Smart Enterprise', I'm not what the practicalities and effectiveness are in putting such technology into the existing Indian distribution network and customer premises connections? Perhaps Raj, Santhosh and the other contributors could advise. It is interesting to look at the Italian Smart Metering programme (30+million meters) which was of justified on the basis of prevention of fraud. The simple interactive facility then allowed basic tariff switching, power limiting and disconnection. That has enabled them to reduce their Peaks and thereby avoid building some new plant to cover their long standing capacity defecit; their blackout was caused by a single fault while they were importing 10% over programme. An AC Power system transports massive amounts of Electricity instantaneously from lots of big machinery 'locked together' by synchronism. It is rather fragile and you dont get faults very often, although you have to guard against lots of credible trips. As a sobering thought, at the GB System Peak we push 85million Brakehorsepower through a pretty fragile st of wires!!

Stephen Browning - 08/02/2012 - 03:03

India Smart Grid

The question is: "Would India, and the US, be better off by designing our grids to run in independent segments rather than seeking some universal system stability?" During our US great Northeast Blackout some regions in the Northeast were spared by simply disconnecting crom the grid.

Craig Kneeland - 08/02/2012 - 04:37

Need for Smart Grid - India

The current blackout in India indeed calls for a automated and efficient Electric Transmission & Distribution Network. I definitely agree with Dhamodaran Sir’s views on the same.Smart Grid will not only provide automated means to switch to alternatives in ase of outages, but also, it would help in implementing consumer-friendly energy utilisation tracking and usage.Being a Technical Consultant-utilities and looking at the implementation of SmartGrid in countries like USA, I strongly feel that the need of the same is much more in India where we have a big and subdivided electric network.The country would certainly benefit from the implementation of Smart Grid technology.The biggest advantage would be reducing the energy loss from transmision to distribution network which itself would reduce the cost and energy losses.With the advent of technology, the common man is now more aware about the energy consumption. With a better Customer-aware and technically automated and reliable concept, I think Smart Grid is the right choice.

Baljeet Kaur Sathi - 08/02/2012 - 19:11

RE:Blackout India

Certainly an effective smartgrid might have helped. But so would have rain (they are in a drought and hydro's are low). Significant energy conservation would help also. Because of the drought conditions farmers are pumping more water from deep wells -- that takes lots of power. Not small pumps -- but lots of big pumps. IEEE Spectrum included a quick look (of course that means it may change with better data) and the best guest is that "Lack of Rain was the Leading Cause" When the well (hydro's) start to run dry -- there is very little a smart grid can do - EXCEPT shed load. That being said - the existing India SCADA controls are certainly in need of work. Smartgrid would have contained the outage to the one region that was exceeding their allotment - resulting in the cascading failures -- TWO days in a row. Apparently time of use (TOU) electric rates added to the problem. Many of the industrial companies and heavy users shifted their electric demand to "Off Peak" evening hours. Unfortuantely those evening hours appear to have signficant peaks in them also. A truly Smartgrid -- WITH truly SMART water pumps and industrial plants might have prevented the problems. But then so would have rain... The outage may be a strong argument for why a diverse mix of energy sources including renewable are important. Wind and solar MIGHT have taken some of the burden off the hydro generation earlier on in the year allowing the bulk generators more breathing room. Of course all this is speculation, it will be months before the whole problem is truly really understood and years before problems are fixed. I love the picture of the local distribution interconnections!!! IEEE article for those interested is IEEE's website "spectrum.ieee.org" look for article called "Lack of rain leading cause of India grid collapse"

Dennis Heidner - 08/02/2012 - 20:53

Need political Desire & Appropriate Vision.

Santosh Nair & Raj I appreciate your vision but the political desire makes it difference Here no one is possessing the value of others time & inconvenience. There is large technical communication as well as knowledge Gap between political leaders & system organizer, & have no vision & trust cause of lot of corruption in each sector. Lack of Desire.. (Political views only depend on what I will get more in my pocket)

Rahul Madhukar Shinde SOMWR PETH PUNE. - 08/02/2012 - 21:00

Smart ToU and Water

Hi there. I was interested to see Dennis's comment. My own work on the Smart customer warned that use of ToU across a large part of the demand could distort (rather than smooth) the demand profile and can cause bigger peaks (restart effect) unless carefully positioned. The successful schemes tend to apply to only a part of the demand, albeit with preset prices and periods (for up front confidence). To find my notes please follow the trail to the Future Power Systems documents via the Trail from www.eleceffic.com FPS 21 covers the Smart Customer (go to the end first to see the salient points) while FPS 20 has warnings about flexing customer demand and forecasting methods. As regards water, I looked at the India National Dispatch centre monthly report for June. Hydro output seemed to be just a few hundred MW. Have I got that right?

Stephen Browning - 08/04/2012 - 01:54

Water - correction

Hi there; sorry I misread the data from the NLDC June report - I see the average output was about 17GW out of 40.

Stephen Browning - 08/04/2012 - 02:25

Peak chasing

Yes, TOU can push peaks to strange times. When Australia introduced an off peak water heater program it started getting price spikes (100 times normal) at midnight. As to the frequency effect on price and the willingness to over draw electricity, the pricing period is 15 minutes, meaning the second by second changes are irrelavant to price driven load. The frequency effect is more clearly a problem in Europe, where on the hour schedule changes create a pattern of frequency irregularities.

Mark Lively - 08/04/2012 - 11:50

Security and Stability

The main point is that each event was caused by caused by Transmission circuits tripping and the remaining lines crossing the (Regional) boundaries were unable to take the extra load. Thus you get cascade failure which splits the system and the importing area was unsustainable. Neither Voltage, Frequency, pre fault line flows or price are going to show if a system is insecure for a credible fault. That has to be determined by specific studies which test the flow redistribution for each credible fault in turn. The Control Centre SCADA/EMS should have been doing that from the metered data but to secure a system needs before the event studies, with accurate modelling of locational generation and demand, so that remedial action can be taken in good time. As regards the Smart Customer, the interfaces need to be flexible to accept different types of signals of matching and security action. We need a flexible interface, within a standard framework, so that different data message structures can be configured. Simple tariff manipulation is too 'blunt' and instrument as overreaction can be worse that the original condition. Thats a 'tip of the iceberg' comment!!

Stephen Browning - 08/06/2012 - 00:30

Solar Storm - CME event

Hi all, It seems their was a weak Coronal Mass Ejection on July 28 which arrived at Earth on the 31st http://www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/frameset.php?pageid=http%3A//www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/press/010812.php Just trying to work out what the rocks are made of. I know the Deccan traps are volcanic (last major Basalt flow event 65 million years ago - date seem familiar??) but perhaps that is a good conductor?? I know granite is the worst.. The Bina-Agra and adjacent circuits that tripped runb across the Traps. As I unserstand it, a CME hitting on lines with towers which do not have good earthing wil cause imbalanced voltage hikes on the phases and the protection relays operate to disconnect the circuit. The worst case was Canada in 1989. http://www.indianetzone.com/40/indian_geology.htm

Stephen Browning - 08/06/2012 - 05:32

RE:India blackout

Good info Steve. Going back and reading my post -- I wasn't real clear why lack of rain was such a problem. IEEE article premis was that because of the drought - the normal monsoons and river flows are not the very low. The result is the normal water available for irrigation isn't there. The lack of river irrigation water means more deep well pumps that add strain to the already stressed electrical grid. Because the rivers are running low - they hydro's can't be run at peak power. Then states use more than their allocation -- and conditions are prime for a failure. As for solar flares - a CME could mess up the scada signaling -- if it was already marginal. Because the outage was so wide spread - it will be a lesson learned for utilities world wide. Perhaps it will help focus the various India state governments and planning agencies to take action and build one of the most modern and resilient grids available. The India outage of 2012 will be one of the top news stories of the year and it will be THE text book example for utility/energy planners for many years -- after we know the whole story of how the event occurred and what triggered it.

Dennis Heidner - 08/07/2012 - 21:14

System Security - More analysis

Thanks Dennis. The India National Load Dispatch centre Monthly report for June showed Hydro down at 17GW on a capacity of 39GW. Here is another report http://www.utilityproducts.com/news/2012/08/07/power-failure-what-really-happened-and-why-the-grid-s-size-complexity-are-a-big-problem.html They are getting at the combination of issues that caused the actual cascade, but we need to see the initial trips on both events to see what started the split. Some interesting comments on LF relay maintenance (or not) and the weakening of the Unscheduled Interchange price which penalises excessive Inter-Regional flows; I'll run that past my contact in the states who is heavily involved with such pricing methods. He told me they had been pushing the India to get UI to penalise properly for security management, not just flow. The frequency graphs on the other reports show the decline and fall of the North and North East, plus the East on the July 31 event. The PSERC report we cited above has trip lists from the Regional Dispatch centres Although the Bina-Gwalior-Agra 765kV line was heavily loaded (from West Region to North Region) before both incidents , it is a big circuit. From the Northern region July 31 trip list It looks like two of the smaller 400kV lines may have gone first. One 400 line trip may have caused another 400 to go on overcurrent which pushed the Agra-Gwalior over the edge and caused the split. There was a weak Solar flare (CME) which hit the Earth on July 31. One report on July 31 hints at 'spurious relay operation' near Agra. With heavy CME induced currents, I assume main and/or phase imbalance protection is triggered. I'm trying to hunt for a technical report on the 1989 Canadian incident to see what protection actually triggered, but I'm not having much luck with the search. My point is that the security state of the intact Network cannot be determined by frequency or flow alone and 'uncertainty' as regards generation and demand location and magnitude (which drives Power flow and security/stability studies) is dangerous. That certainly seems to be the case here and there are comments about India needing more Phase Monitoring Units which can indicate weak interconnection. However, PMUs alone may not show the actual security risks. The GB version of future 'locational generation/demand uncertainty' is when we get large scale short notice changes to wind output and the corresponding corrective action from flexible genera

Stephen Browning - 08/09/2012 - 02:51

System Security - More analysis - 2

Sorry, I overloaded the buffer on the last submission - ths last section should have read... The GB version of future 'locational generation/demand uncertainty' is when we get large scale short notice changes to wind output and the corresponding corrective action from flexible generation, (smart) customer action and storage..... You need high speed Security/Stability study execution for the relevant lead times, based on accurate generator, customer and wires (status and parameter) data. We certainly have some pretty powerful processing facilities to do this but it is dissemination of the results and actions which is crucial. "There is only one thing worse than having an insecure system and that is not knowing that it is insecure"

Stephen Browning - 08/09/2012 - 02:56

IEEE and Utility Products

I think it was an 'Accident waiting to happen'. An IEEE report is at http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid/a-postmortem-on-indias-blackout They mainly look at the Jul30 incident and the fact that Northern region loads were peaking in the middle of the night and Industry was allowed to pick up (dangers of piecemeal customer control). However, they haven't really got at the combination of reasons for the actual split; a utility products article does a better job. http://www.utilityproducts.com/news/2012/08/07/power-failure-what-really-happened-and-why-the-grid-s-size-complexity-are-a-big-problem.html India has a lot of new grid and generation but they were pushing it further and further for various reasons (including Politics?) and they don't seem to have been monitoring security (N-1) properly. Thus just the one circuit trip on the West to North boundary - which could have been due to lightning, Solar flare GIC, dirty insulators, protection malfunction (overheating circuit boards) etc etc - caused the split. They seem to have deactivated the automatic frequency based demand reduction facilities!!!, thus the North, North East (and East on Jul31) collapsed. As regards Hydro (and possibly irrigation demand) there is an interesting conundrum. Looking at the National Dispatch centre June report the installed Hydro capacity and load factor for each region are North 15.4GW, 65% North East 1.2GW 47%, East 3.9GW 38% South 11.4GW 19% , West 7.5GW 19% So, the North is down but the big Hydro deficits are in the South and West; the regions which held up on exporting side of the split.

Stephen Browning - 08/16/2012 - 02:33

Report on the Report

We learn a little more but I cant see a link to the report itself to work out what tripped first and why in the case of each 'cascade'. http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/overdrawal-by-northern-states-caused-power-grid-failure-report-255848 http://www.pennenergy.com/index/articles/newsdisplay/1726052090.html Basically, with the states controlling demand management the operator has one hand tied behind his back. Add the fact that the automatic low frequency load tripping mechanisms were disengaged http://www.utilityproducts.com/news/2012/08/07/power-failure-what-really-happened-and-why-the-grid-s-size-complexity-are-a-big-problem.html and the operator has both hands tied behind his back. This was an accident waiting to happen. The lines pre fault may not have been overloaded. It looks like one failed (could be lighting, GIC, dirty insulators or a transformer problem or even protection malfunction) another overloaded and tripped on overcurrent and the rest followed suit on the West-North Border. The excess demand take in the northmay have givem und unexpected flow pattern. Thus the risk of an N-1 event may not have been assessed for the flow condition that occurred (needs Predictive Security assessment runs). However, the SCADA/EMS Real time Security assessment should have flagged all trips causing post fault overload. " There is only one thing worse than having an insecure system and that is no knowing that is insecure! "

Stephen Browning - 08/18/2012 - 08:51

Three main deficiences not answered

Stephen – Appreciate your well researched analysis of the Indian blackout post-mortem. I haven’t seen the actual report being released publicly by NLDC or CEA – their websites don’t have any news items or links about the August 16 report. I am posting my comments on both threads in SGN. Having involved and closely examining the results from the 2003 US North-East blackout, I can very confidently point to three big deficiencies in the operation of Indian power grid. Leaving aside all the discussed issues like UP State overdrawing from Northern regional grid, Solar flares, drought in north India causing hydro reserves to dwindle and negative generation reserve in northern region, the following three deficiencies proved to be the nail in the coffin for the Indian blackout: -

Raj - 08/20/2012 - 13:50

Three main deficiences not answered

-

Raj - 08/20/2012 - 13:53

Deficiency 1 - SCADA/ EMS not in use

NLDC SCADA/ EMS not in full operation - To me this is the biggest problem with NLDC and NRLDC. Ten years ago Power Grid installed a full fledged SCADA/ EMS computer system with real-time advanced application functions like Security Analysis, Contingency Analysis and State Estimation which was supplied by Alstom Grid. In fact each of the RLDC has their own SCADA/ EMS computer systems and all these five systems are networked at National Load Dispatch Center, New Delhi. Unfortunately, NLDC have not been using the advanced application functions in real-time mode – they were using it for offline study purposes. This basically defeats the main purpose of installing multi-million dollar computer systems to maintain grid integrity. The million dollar question for NLDC is why they were not using the EMS functions. Given all the constraints imposed on the grid, the EMS functions can accurately alert the operators on what’s going on. It’s like flying an airplane in turbulent conditions with the pilot skillfully maneuvering the route using computer systems onboard and from ground support controls. The NLDC operators weren’t trained properly to handle such contingencies. Overdrawing by states is a common problem and the operators should have been armed with strategies to curtail load when the draw exceeds certain limits. The lack of operator training is the second deficiency.

Raj - 08/20/2012 - 13:59

Deficiency 2 - OTS not in use

Operator Training Simulator (OTS) not used - The OTS was supplied along with SCADA/ EMS computer systems and was not being used to its fullest extent. CEA and NLDC should be able to answer this question. OTS just like a Flight Simulator can simulate hundreds of grid contingencies based on real life situations. In the case of UP State overdrawing from Northern Region, a fully trained transmission security coordinator/ operator would know which high-voltage transmission lines would exceed their thermal limits at a specific time. At that moment, the coordinator could order temporary load shedding and request the infringing state to reduce their intake. These are basic Power Systems 101 training. It’s appalling that NLDC operators were mute spectators to overdraw by states for several hours. The OTS can simulate simultaneous tripping of EHT transmission lines and suggest network routing or load curtailment to prevent a cascading blackout

Raj - 08/20/2012 - 14:01

Deficiency 3 - Lack of coordinated protection system

Improper Relay coordination between states and regions - This is one of the most critical functions for a largely interconnected grid like India where the entire transmission network hangs like a large spider web delicately balanced in the center and strongly anchored in between. If the regional grids and states had correctly co-ordinated their frequency and power relay settings, part of the UP State would have islanded itself thereby preventing a complete northern region blackout. During the 2003 North-East US blackout, AEP and National Grid successfully islanded themselves from the cascading blackout which started in First Energy’s Ohio territory. AEP and NGC had a very good coordinated relay protection scheme combined with well trained system operators using their SCADA/ EMS functions, thereby successfully isolating themselves from a large catastrophe. The NE US blackout could have been contained if Midwest ISO Operators hadn’t turned off State Estimator in their SCADA / EMS computer – which goes back to my first deficiency. The big unanswered question is why the blackout recurred again after twenty four hours. As I wrote in my earlier comments, the investigation report may never address the three deficiencies that I listed. The report will instead focus on states overdrawing and eventually make them scapegoats.

Raj - 08/20/2012 - 14:05

Indian Blackout - Power Ministry report - Part 2

One train of through that comes out of this is that you can go insecure due to unexpected Generation-Demand patterns occurring across a system (say due to large wind prediction errors and the action of compensating generation). Although the SCADA/EMS will monitor security in real time, by that stage the options are limited (generation loading and perhaps Smart customer action?) As you will see they propose to replace their Unscheduled Interchange mechanism by something stronger. To cover N-1 security they will need a locational pricing mechanism, fed from security analysis and with some 'depth' in the price message. India's generation capacity is 205GW and the Peak demand is @120GW. However, there are a lot of outages and generation is not always in the right place... Thus Powergrid have 28GW of Inter-regional circuits.

Stephen Browning - 08/26/2012 - 09:44

India NLDC power generation for July 2012

India's Power System Operation Corporation (PSOC) has released the July 2012 energy production, use and the sequence that occurred during the two outages. A complex set of events, some transmission lines down for planned repairs, some overdraw activity, some lower than normal generation activity. The PSOC website link for their report is: http://www.nldc.in/NLDC/monthlyreport/July%202012%20Monthly%20Report%20.pdf

Dennis Heidner - 02/09/2013 - 13:02

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